Published: April 26, 2008 11:06 pm      

T-shirt incident causes havoc at amusement park

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a threat to the children of our nation. After meeting me, the youth of this country often feel compelled to go home and eat – yes eat – their brothers and sisters. I’m a horrible individual, and should be avoided at all costs.

The above paragraph is, in a nutshell, the view that Six Flags apparently has of me, and is their justification for refusing to allow me into their park.

Last weekend a group of friends and I traveled to San Antonio for a day at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. It’s a trip we had been planning for quite a while, and as I am a huge roller coaster fanatic, I was ecstatic. After getting our tickets, we headed for the entrance gates. I placed my wallet and cell phone in the basket on the other side of the metal detector and walked on through. No alarms went off, no armed security guards came running at me to take me down, but the woman manning the gate simply stood in front of me staring at my shirt.

Let me give you a visual. The shirt I was wearing was for Oh No! Oh My!, a local indie-pop band here in Austin. The art on the tee features two cartoon girls each taking a bite out of a cartoon kid. A joint thought bubble extends from each of the kid’s mouths, saying the band name, with Oh No! facing right side up and Oh My! upside down. There is some red droplets falling from the mouths of the eaters, which I suppose is blood. Either way, it is nowhere near as violent as it sounds and the design is clearly cartoonish and in no way resembles real life. Right, continuing with the story.

The woman, after what seemed like ages of staring at my shirt, said, “What’s that?” I informed her that it was for a band, and she replied with a simple “Mmmhmm.” I tried to walk past her but she stopped me, saying “If that’s what I think it is, I can’t let you into the park.” My heart sank. I had visions of missing out on all the roller coasters and fun that I had been looking forward to all week. Here’s where it gets Cops-esque. She calls over a security guard and tells him, “Look, they’re eating kids.” The guy doesn’t seem to want to make a call but eventually says that yes, it’s too offensive to be allowed into the park. As irritated and upset as I was, I nearly burst out laughing when the woman then said, “Plus, it says ‘My Ho’ on it.” I politely informed her that what she was reading was simply “Oh My” upside down, and asked her when her last eye exam had been performed. That last part may or may not be true.

She wasn’t done there. Since she apparently wouldn’t be vindicated unless every single person in the park agreed with her, she called over two more security guards, both of whom said that I could not enter. I asked if turning the shirt inside out would alleviate the problem, but one of the burlier men told me no, because “you’d still be wearing it and still be bringing it into our park.” So that was that, I wasn’t getting in. I trudged all the way back to the parking lot and changed into a shirt that my friend happened to have in his trunk, and went back inside.

Throughout the course of the day, I learned some important lessons about what Six Flags will allow. These include: Nazi patriotism, as evidenced by the guy wearing a shirt with a swastika emblazoned on it; Emo/goth kids, as evidenced by the pink shirt worn by one depressing-looking individual that proudly stated “Dead Kids Living”; and finally, anti-feminine softcore porn, as evidenced by the shirt featuring two bikini-clad women laying on top of each other, with the words “Girls in Prison” printed under it. These images, ladies and gents, are all acceptable fare for entrance into the park, but cartoon baby-eating is strictly off limits.

I mean, kids are going to learn about Hitler anyway, so we might as well allow them to see swastikas, and the trendy way for youngsters to dress is emo because their dull, suburban-dwelling existences are so depressing. And degrading and objectifying women is simply the American way, because how can you call yourself a citizen unless you look at highly sexualized portrayals of homosexuality? But only with women, of course.

Tragically, the shirt must have escaped from the trunk while we were in the park, because when we got back Saturday night, there were tons of cartoon children strewn about on the ground, creating an awful sight.

Let’s be serious. Stick to making sure weapons and shirts with cursing or nudity don’t get in, and I guarantee you there won’t be an epidemic of baby cannibalism because you neglected shirts like mine.

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Robert Rich is a sophomore journalism major at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from Westwood High School in 2006. He can be reached via e-mail at robert.rich@mail.utexas.edu